Adam J. Simpson, Writer and Author

Please enjoy the first chapter of my book for free below, the full book is available on Amazon in both paperback and Ebook formats Here.

Chapter One

Yannick stood on a ridge of snow. He raised one trembling, gloved hand to his face and wiped the clinging frost from his goggles – he’d grown used to the freezing cold and the oppressive, driving winds that carried vindictive little shards of ice during his very first week on the plains but the frosting on his goggles never stopped being annoying.

No, his hand was shaking because of what lay in front of him, not the sub-zero temperatures and arctic weather.

He fell to his knees and started laughing. The thick wraps around his head and mouth muffling the sound and making it reverberate through his skull.

He heard stifled shouts behind him and then a hand on his shoulder. Obviously his team had thought he was injured or ill, he looked up to assure them but the owner of the hand had already seen what he had seen and was now also staring in disbelief.

The figure took a few steps forward before also dropping to their knees. The other four members joined them but managed to stay on their feet, staring in silence and incredulity.

As the expedition leader, Yannick knew the party had to get moving once again. He rose to his feet before turning and helping the kneeling team member up as well.

Looking into an ice-flecked, mirrored visor as he took their hand, Yannick couldn’t help but notice how easily he pulled them to their feet. He had to hope it was Elise – if one of the men had lost that much weight then they were in trouble. The frozen north seemed to strip away calories with every gust of wind.

Yannick wanted to say something, to mark the occasion or to tell them his plans but the howling wind made verbal communication impossible, he’d have to make do with hand signals.

He walked over to the ridge of snow and looked across the rift. There was an identical ridge a few hundred metres away facing in the opposite direction, the snow in between sloped gently downward until it was mid-way between the two before gently sloping back up toward the opposing side.

As he looked to his right he could see that the two ridges continued on for several hundred meters as perfectly straight parallel lines before being swallowed by the maelstrom.

Nothing in nature had such geometric symmetry, and Yannick knew it. A grin spread across his thin lips beneath the layers of cloth that insulated and shielded his head from the icy winds.

This was a scar. A deep gouge in the permafrost and snow where a massive, heavy ship had come down and torn a lasting wound into the planet’s surface in a perfectly straight trajectory from the spot where the ship first impacted, all the way to its final resting place.

The ship they were looking for had been flying northward when she came down so logic told him that so long as they followed the tear northwards they would find their prize.

He turned to his team and pointed north and as one they all nodded to him in reply, they were just as keen as he was to find their quarry, even though what little daylight they had was fading fast.

The prudent thing to do would be to use the shelter provided by the rift here while it was still light enough to set up camp and head out in the morning, but they were so close they could taste it.

Sleep could wait, glory would not.

 

#

 

“How did you think this would end?” the man before Saffron asked with a sneer, opening his arms in feigned sympathy.

Saffron didn’t answer for several reasons. Her entire body ached when it wasn’t wracked by agonizing shooting pain caused by what she assumed was nerve damage, not to mention the fact that she was pretty sure that her jaw was broken. She managed a grunt of derision that made her lungs feel as though they were filled with hot coals — cracked ribs were no laughing matter.

The main reason that she didn’t dignify the question with a response was because of the man who asked it of her. The Chairman was the absolute ruler of the Citadel and therefore the entire planet.

His power was total and was matched only by his corruption and cruelty.

It had not always been that way.

The Council had come to power centuries before during a time of great turmoil and upheaval. The lonely continent had been split from shore to shore by warring factions and warlords, each one vying for power the only way they knew how — violence.

The history books told them that the Council simply rose from the discontentment of the common man, the workers and farmers who invariably got caught in the middle. Rumours spread of a city being constructed to the North which sat snugly within a mountain range just below the frozen wraith plains where nought lived but the hardiest of animals.

Its walls were freshly built but thick and sturdy and best of all it owed no allegiance to any of the countless factions, instead promising safety and security to anyone who sought refuge there, so long as they would abide by its laws.

People flocked to the city, whose boundaries expanded to accommodate this influx of citizens. This walled city became known as the Citadel due to its apparent impenetrability, and was governed by the Council. Twenty-one heads families who had laid the very foundations of the city to start with.

Originally, the Council had been a shining beacon of diplomacy and justice. The combined heads ensured only fair and balanced laws were passed and for a time the Citadel lived in relative peace.

But it was not to last. With time one family grew more powerful than the others and wrested absolute power from its competitors. It had been a dark and painful time for the whole planet, and Saffron was in more than enough pain already to want to revisit history.

“Nothing to say, child?” he asked again, feigning empathy. He approached a table that sat next to his prisoner and picked up a small stack of papers before leafing through them. “So few words for one so accomplished?”

He sat down on a chair facing her as he continued to peruse the file.

“A lieutenant of the sons, you led countless attacks against my people and stole my resources from haulers, and that’s just a few of your crimes. You were second in command to Lars Ezelion.” Saffron was shocked to hear the name, and it must have shown since the Chairman’s wrinkled face creased into a grim smile. “Surprised, are you? Tell me Saffron – when was the last time you saw your sister?”

She looked at the floor in sadness, truth be told she couldn’t remember the last time she saw her kid sister. The sons were spread all over the continent, to the extent that Saffron wasn’t sure where her sibling was.

The Chairman rose slowly to his feet, sliding the paperwork onto the stainless metal table as he did.

“You put me in a difficult spot. A prisoner who wont talk is little more than a drain on my resources.” He said, standing up and walking to the sturdy but rusted metal door before striking it three times with his skinny yet deceptively strong fist.

The door swung open and a group of men entered the room who were mostly strangers to Saffron, though she knew one all too well.

His name was Idan, and that one word alone. She had never heard him addressed any other way; he was not a doctor, nor did he carry any form of military rank at the Tower. It was also unclear as to whether Idan was his first or family name. But none of that bothered Saffron so much as knowing that Idan was for all intent and purposes the Chairman’s head torturer.

And he was good at what he did, even now the beaten rebel felt as though she had been run down by a herd of stampeding helk wearing hobnail boots and she imagined that she probably looked about the same.

He was a middle aged man and was intensely hard to describe, if only because he really didn’t seem to have any striking features. He was of average build, with average and unmarked skin. Always spotlessly clean shaven. He had an unremarkable voice, dull light brown eyes and a face like that which a child draws when they are asked to draw ‘a man’. Everything about him just outright mumbled bland. For clothing, he even just wore a pair of not untidy black trousers with a dark grey shirt.

He nodded politely to the Chairman as he shuffled uninterestingly into the room and slid a large briefcase he was carrying onto a table against the wall opposite the door.

Two guardsmen wearing the shining golden regalia of the Tower followed the torturer into the room, one older with worn features but a nonetheless strong body who wore a sergeant’s insignia upon his breastplate and a younger man who matched his sergeant in stature but whose demeanour cried out inexperience and bravado.

The last man to enter was slender almost to the point of malnourishment with a soft, worried looking face that made him look as though he had the weight of the whole city upon his bony shoulders. He wore a black tunic with a loose golden chain around his neck. Even in her weakened state the rebel lieutenant couldn’t help but think it was a strange accessory for any man of the city to wear.

“Fortunately my child, I have found a use for you,” the Chairman said once the new additions to the room had found their spots. The young man in the tunic pushed the door closed behind him. “But I don’t think you’re going to like it.”

With that, Idan finished tinkering with whatever was on the back table and turned towards the pair, carrying a small metal cylinder in his hands.

“A long time ago, something was taken from me.” The Chairman said as he stared at the cylinder nestled between his torturer’s hands. “Well, it was a someone but I think you already know what I am referring to.”

Saffron felt a surge of adrenaline flood her body as she recognised the item in Idan’s hands. She knew it only from loose description of course since few people outside of the Tower’s research teams had ever seen one in the shiny metallic flesh.

If she was right then the innocuous looking cylinder contained a substance that had the power to make the right person very, very powerful and any other person very painfully dead. And she knew very well that it was never meant for her.

“Now sadly, after she was taken from me any and all record of her DNA vanished from the labs and I am left scrabbling around in darkness trying to find what became of her. There are rumours that what is left of the rebellion have her and I would honestly rather that than face the thought of her outside these walls alone. It also gives me the chance to try and find her in a more methodical but altogether slower manner.”

He nodded to his guardsmen who stepped in and pinned Saffron to her cold metal chair with gauntleted hands, their grasp sent lances of pain throughout the rebel’s broken body, reawakening nerves made raw through day-old bruised bones and abrasions.

“My method is simple,” The Chairman said with a smile. “Either you tell me all you know about the whereabouts of Cyra, or I simply make sure that you are not her by administering this sample to you. Happily it will save me the hassle of killing you since if you are not her the damage it will do to your brain and cell membranes will be lethal… eventually.”

Saffron had known a doctor back in the sons who went by the name of Brynn.

She was a triage doctor mostly, healing cuts and broken bones but she was also a keen researcher. It had taken her much of her career to find out mere slivers of information about Cyra, the girl they had protected all these years and what exactly the Council wanted with her.

Through leaked information and a lot of reading she had gleaned that the Council had found a way to manufacture a new weapon using an element found deep within their planet’s crust. The nature and specifics of it were embroiled in secrecy and were never uncovered but it was clear that whatever it was would require a human component, a controller to manage and fire the device.

Cyra would be that controller but it would require her to be melded with a sample of the metal in order to recognise her as a part of itself. She remembered listening with disbelief as the doctor had told her the tale at the time and it seemed just as incredible to recall now.

The doctor had gone on about a lot of scientific and biological jargon which had flown clean over her head, it being the head of a soldier and not a physicist. Still one thing had stuck with her.

The sample was made for Cyra.

If injected into anyone else you may as well have been injecting enriched uranium since the horrifying effects on the body would most likely be  the same.

The Chairman sighed with impatience before turning towards the door. Saffron realised that several moments had passed since he had asked for her co-operation.

“Very well, in your own time Idan.”

The torturer bowed curtly to the Chairman before taking a hold of Saffron’s right wrist and slamming the device onto her forearm.

Cracks appeared in the cylinder before six legs bearing hair-like needles appeared and drove themselves deep into her flesh.

Saffron screamed. It was not a scream of pain, there was no pain after the initial impact of the solid metal device, but as the poison seeped into her she immediately felt her body try to reject it and the substance fought back.

It began with a tingling that grew in intensity until it felt as though a flare burned beneath her skin – then it began to spread. The fire crept up her arm until before long it began scorching its way across the nerves in her neck and across her chest.

She looked at her arm once again only to see the skin turning a charcoal blackish grey as though her flesh were being seared from her bones. Saffron screamed again as the invasive fire continued up her neck, into her skull and began tugging at the fibres of her brain.

The flames began to consume her thoughts.

 

 

The rebel let out another scream as the corruption spread up her neck and into her skull, the reaction was truly horrific to view, the Chairman shuddered to think what it must be like to endure.

He looked across at his assistant and smiled as he saw the expression on his face.

Evan Tor was his name and the Chairman had found him many years previously working on one of the administration levels of the Tower.

He was an adequate assistant who clearly had a very ordered mind, but that wasn’t the reason the Chairman had taken an interest in him.

The truth was that Evan clearly sympathised with the rebel and the people of the Citadel equally. That is to say that he saw them as people like himself who were just doing the best they could to get by, though he did not appear to follow their ideology.

Whatever the reason, the ruler had found him an invaluable gauge of his own actions with regard to how his people and enemies might react. If Tor was unfazed then he would have to step up his game to have an impact, if he reacted with barely concealed anger then perhaps it would be worth reeling himself in to avoid a second rebellion or civil unrest.

“Idan,” he said, turning to address his torturer. “How long do you think this will take?”

The unremarkable man had already padded back over to his table and began to pack up and organise his things.

“Oh not long my lord,” he replied evenly, his demeanour verging on the side of boredom. “A day, maybe two to break down the neural pathways in her mind. A cakewalk to what a skilled interrogator can do with a set of scalpels and a few weeks in a cell.”

‘Disappointment,’ the Chairman thought to himself while keeping his face deadpan. ‘He thought I was going to give the rebel to him to finish off.’ It was becoming clearer each minute that he spent with his interrogator that he did not do the job through loyalty or any kind of duty.

“Very good,” the Chairman replied as he turned to his guards. “Take the prisoner and chain her to the floor of the cell block. Let the people know the fate of those who would defy the Council.”

The guards nodded respectfully before turning towards the woman, whose body was already shaking as the volatile element slowly destroyed her physiology cell by cell.

“Evan, the door please. I can barely hear myself think in here with all that screaming.”

His aide nodded, apparently keen to vacate the room rushing past him to throw open the door. Mostly to savour the pain and impatience scrawled across his soft hearted assistant’s face the Chairman took his time ambling through the open door.

Once in the corridor the Chairman fell into his customary step; assertive but not rushed.

Never rushed.

Evan fell into step alongside him, notably lighter in step now that the dying screams of the rebel lieutenant grew fainter behind them.

“Evan, ensure that any and all footage of the woman’s death is taken to be studied by my scientific teams on the upper levels, they will be upset enough that she isn’t in one of their labs already.”

“Yes, my lord,” Evan replied, hesitating for a moment before adding “why not send her up there, my lord? It will make all the more come from her demise.”

The Chairman let out a dry, rasping laugh.

“Her death already has many, many benefits, my boy,” he replied finally once he had caught his breath. “Firstly, she is a key rebel lieutenant and very unlikely to talk therefore is better off dead before she tries to escape and wounds my guards. Secondly she is being yet another test subject for the ongoing Index project – another name on a massive list of missing or suspect persons who may be Cyra under a false name or identity and Thirdly, as I have previously said she is a lieutenant of the sons. In a few days’ time when she is laying cold and lifeless on the icy stone floor of my cells, we shall release a few minor offenders back into the civilian population and the details of her fate will spread almost as fast as the accompanying message of what I do to those who take from my city and kill my soldiers.”

“Are you not worried it may make her a martyr, my lord?” the younger man said, speaking softly so as to make it appear that he was looking out for his master rather than the memory of the doomed rebel.

“The Cabal know the city better than I, Evan – and they certainly know it far better than you. They assure me that the rebellion is now nothing more than a bitter memory to our population since most knew workers who died in the foundry attacks and others soldiers who were wounded in the final battle at Karrick’s fall. The rest listen to what others tend to say. There is no love for what remains of the brotherhood within these walls, a dead insurgent will only be good news to them and will prove that the eyes of the Tower never, ever stop watching.”

 

#

 

The rank air that filled the cell block flooded into the elevator the moment its heavy doors slid open to reveal the gloomy, poorly lit stone walls of the Tower’s cell block. The breeze was cool on Sergeant Sixt’s rough skin and tousled his sweat-soaked hair like it was dandelion seeds on the wind. Though it was a grim and dark place truth was that the sergeant quite liked to visit. The chilled air was a pleasant contrast to the near oppressive warmth that gently cooked the rest of the Tower’s floors and Sixt liked it to be cool.

The breeze carried a tinge of sweat and an almost palpable feeling of desperation, as though the air itself bore the bitter memories of those who had breathed it in over the decades. Rough-hewn rock walls added their own mustiness as the party stepped out of the elevator and onto the walkway that ran around the cell block and eventually down to the ground floor.

His prisoner was barely able to walk already, Sixt and his private having to practically drag her twitching, broken form all the way from the torturer’s chamber to the main elevator. Even now her slumped body hung between them, an arm each beneath her shoulders and wrapped around her back. Their polished armour cast a stark contrast to their charge’s tattered and bloody clothes. Sixt sighed as he noticed a patch of blood drying on his undershirt.

“That’s it boy,” he said, doing his best to encourage his subordinate. “Let’s get her chained up so’s we can get back to the mess and get something to eat, eh?”

The younger man grunted under her weight as they continued the descent into the bottom of the chamber.

The Tower’s dungeon was roughly circular in shape, with doors of assorted sizes and shapes adorning its stone walls. The chamber was cut from the very rock that the Tower sat atop of and its walls bore no windows, no light and no hope. A spiraled walkway led from the elevator door to the lower level where a large, cast iron grate covered a void that, if rumours were true would lead any would-be explorers into oblivion.

After some time and no small amount of grunting and sweating they finally reached the lower level and unceremoniously dumped the dying rebel onto the hard metal grate that hung over the central void.

The sergeant was exhausted and now that they had reached their final destination he allowed himself a moment of weakness and slumped down atop the cold iron grate, taking care to put some distance between himself and the rebel that the Chairman had called Saffron. She had begun to mumble to herself in an altogether unpleasant and disconcerting way.

“Sarge?” the private said, peering deeply into the darkness beneath the grate. “How deep do you think this goes?”

The boy was very new to the Tower, only months ago having undergone his indoctrination. Sixt could still see the fire in his eyes whenever he spoke to an officer and the raw, seething hatred that boiled over whenever someone mentioned Karrick’s failed rebellion.

“I never did catch your name, private?” he said eventually, between rasping breaths.

“Felton, Sergeant.”

“Well Felton, it’s not about how deep the hole is, it’s about how dark it is.” He continued as he rose to his feet. “And this hole right here is the darkest there is, because the only man ever thrown into it will never see the light of day again.”

The sergeant wandered over to an old wooden cell door set into one of the walls and wrenched it open with a hard tug, revealing a dirty and cluttered storage room beyond. He peered into the gloom before he spotted what he was looking for and pulled it out after him.

Cables scraped against the floor behind him as he carried a pair of large, grey and blocky shackles over to where the prisoner lay before passing a pair to his subordinate.

“Mag-cuffs, you know what you are doing?” he asked and received a curt nod in reply.

Together they grabbed one of the girl’s arms each and wrapped a heavy duty cuff around her bloodied wrists.

Whining servos pulled composite seals inside the cuffs tight ensuring that she would not be able to slip her slender but once strong hands out of the restraints.

“Do you know who is down there then sarge?” the private asked as they wandered off in opposite directions, each grasping one of the mag-locks attached to the other end of the shackles. “Is it someone I might have heard of?”

The sergeant knelt down as he reached the edge of the grate and placed the bulky electromagnet against the aged iron of the grating and pressed the large green button on its back. The device emitted a faint hum as the transformers powered up then clunked as the coils engaged, bonding the two surfaces together stronger than if they had been welded. He heard a faint clunk from the other side of the grate as Felton did the same.

Once the pair were engaged they synchronised and spools within the grey cases started up, taking any slack out of the high tensile cables that ran to the girl’s restraints.

“There are some things that even we in The Onyx Guard should not talk about, Felton.” Sixt grumbled in reply, looking pointedly at one of the numerous cameras that kept a 24 hour vigil in the cell block. “That hole is one of them.”

The private looked confused for a moment, even annoyed at being scolded though his expression quickly turned to embarrassment as though he was about to argue his right to know until he realised who he was addressing and broke eye contact, choosing instead to look around at the numerous cells set into the stone walls.

“The other inmates seem quiet, Sergeant? Is that normal?” he asked finally, apparently keen to change the subject.

“They are curious, this is not a regular occurrence for them. Anything out the ordinary is pause for thought in this place.” He muttered, brushing down his armour and straightening himself up.

“You may have noticed that you have a new resident here in bowels of the Tower!” He boomed, his military voice echoing off the grey, damp walls and making it seem as though the prison was much larger than it really was. “Do not worry! She won’t be affecting your rations. This woman is – was – a lieutenant in what remains of the Brotherhood that tore this city apart ten years ago but didn’t have the common decency to die with the rest of the misguided murderers in their cave. Already a particularly nasty poison is working its way through her body and should kill her by first light, however I must warn you that it will not be a peaceful death. You have quite the night ahead of you.”

As if to emphasise his point their prisoner chose that moment to let out a guttural, feral scream that made the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end. Sixt shivered.

The private, not having the experience of the sergeant jumped enough that his boot caught in the grating and he tumbled onto its hard, unyielding surface – an ear-shattering clang rang out and echoed off the walls as his reinforced plating impacted against the pitted iron.

He scrambled to his feet in moments, planting a particularly brutal kick into the downed prisoner’s ribs that was accompanied by an unpleasant crack.

“Damned cave-dog!” the younger man growled as he caught his breath. “What did you do that for?”

The sudden blow to the ribs seemed to focus the prisoner for a moment, just long enough for her to pull herself to her knees, her arms still outstretched and kept taut by the mechanisms in her restraints. She looked up at the younger man through her bloody once-blonde hair from darkened sockets with bottomless eyes of pitiless black.

“He is here,” she croaked, every strained word that left her throat laced with pain and anguish. Black tears formed in the corner of her eyes and began to cascade over her cheeks, leaving shimmering lines of obsidian that ran down her face, around the corners of her lips before falling upon the bloodied fabric of her vest top. “He can free me,” she added before pausing for a hacking cough that wracked her athletic frame. “He can free us all.”

The two guards shared a brief glance of confusion and disbelief before turning their attention back to the girl. The sergeant shrugged and went to walk away, satisfied that his work for the evening was done. The younger man seemed intent on focusing more of his aggression on the restrained prisoner, however and balled up a gauntleted fist.

“Free? Free who? The rebels? Answer me!” he bellowed as best he could, his inexperience showing as his voice cracked under the pressure. He must have realised how he sounded because he landed a punch on the side of the prisoner’s face that she barely seemed to feel.

Nonetheless the girl replied as best she could.

“Me, you?” she added, darkly. “Everyone. Death will set us-“

She never finished her sentence as another blow from his armoured fist landed across the left side of her face. The sergeant let out a sigh, he remembered being that passionate about the rebellion but as the years wore on a part of him just got tired of the crusade. He approached his subordinate and was about to call him off when a loud clang drew his attention.

Towards the back wall on the lower level, opposite the lift shaft a heavy duty door had swung open upon long-unused hinges. A tooth-jarring creak echoed around the chamber as a man that the sergeant was surprised to find that he did not recognise began to stride across the floor towards the trio.

“I wouldn’t bother with that Private,” he said, his voice oozing authority and control. “After all you wouldn’t beat a cadaver, would you?”

The new arrival wore more ornate armour than the other two guards in the room, and a captain’s stripe decorated his right shoulder plate. He walked with the kind of self-assurance and menace that only comes with years of military service while the patchwork of scars on his face stood as yet further testament to his combat experience. He was not heavily built but years of military conditioning showed in his well-defined bare arms.

Sixt drew himself to attention when he saw the uniform and stripe.

“Thank you Sergeant, you can take your man and head back to barracks now.”

Sixt was about to reply and salute when the private cut him off.

“But we were sent down here to guard this prisoner!” Felton growled, looking down at the rebel known as Saffron with not just a small amount of hatred in his eyes.

The sergeant never saw the blow coming, and he barely saw it land. What he did hear was a sickeningly organic crack and snap as the captain’s gauntleted fist made contact with Private Felton’s cheekbone, shattering it and most likely his jaw in the process.

The sergeant didn’t move.

“My name is Captain Karzer and I haven’t been in the guard for a very long time,” the new captain said, turning and addressing the sergeant. “But is it commonplace for privates to argue with officers and fail to come to attention when one enters the room.”

“Only privates with very poor career prospects Sir,” he replied with just a sliver of a smile but being sure to keep his eyes fixed on the grey stone wall the opposite side of the cell block. He wasn’t sure who this man was but he seemed to be firm but fair and Sergeant Sixt liked an officer who let those around him know exactly where they stood. For now the veteran decided it was in his best interests to stand very, very still.

“Ah, so you are a man who obeys direct orders promptly and without question?” the officer asked, stepping over the groaning body of the private to bring himself face to face with Sixt. The network of scars that adorned the captain’s face seemed even more intricate – and terrifying – up close.

“I am that man, Sir!” the sergeant barked in response, suddenly getting the creeping feeling that he had missed something.

The officer leaned in close, close enough that Sixt could smell a telltale combination of sweat and.. cyn? Had the captain been drinking?

It was not a train of thought that the old guardsman got very far with since it was truly derailed by the seven words that slid from the captain’s lips like silk yet fell on his ears like an anvil.

“Then why are you still here, Sergeant?”

Sixt inwardly kicked himself as he realised what an idiot he’d just proved himself to be in front of a new officer as he snapped off a smart salute and turned to retrieve the fallen private.

“Come on, idiot.” He grumbled as he hoisted the boy to his feet then wrapped his arm around his back in pretty much the same way that the pair had only minutes before used to bring the rebel prisoner down to the cell block floor.

With the two guardsmen out of the picture, it seemed that the Captain turned his full attention to the prisoner. Sixt watched closely as he led Felton up the carved walkway to the elevator as slowly as he possibly could.

“Do you even know who you are? What is your name?” the officer growled, his thinly veiled anger showing in each and every word.

The girl lifted her head, fresh blood coursing down her face from a gaping wound in her forehead courtesy of the private’s gauntlet.

“I didn’t think so,” he sighed. “There’s so little of you left in there, the fight has taken so much.”

He spun around on his heels and walked a few paces away, his military boots clanking against the heavy metal grate with each perfectly measured step.

“You know, I haven’t been in this Tower for very long? I cut my teeth and earned my stripes in the regular army – Mead’s army, out there fighting rebels… Amongst other things. Now that I am here though, I find myself not entirely agreeing with how they do things.” The captain stopped and looked up at the sergeant and Felton for a moment before continuing. “So I am going to start changing things. Sorry to say though, none of them are changes that will benefit you really, at all.”

With the last sentence the officer spun back on his heels and drew a large, intimidating mag-pistol from its worn holster on his breastplate and aimed it squarely at the prisoner’s heaving chest.

The weapon gave a subtle whirr as the coils inside it buzzed into life. The sergeant recognised that it had to be new, given Karzer’s new rank.

The sergeant’s blood ran cold as he saw the scene unfold before him. It wasn’t that the girl was going to die. Her death warrant was signed the moment she allowed herself to be captured, or even earlier than that when she fled the city to join the rebellion to start with.

No, what panicked Sixt was the fact that this officer was about to kill the prisoner when the Chairman himself had given orders to just chain her down and let the poison take its effect. He opened his mouth to speak, to shout and warn the green officer and stop him making this career – if not life – ending mistake.

“Death will set you free, one way or another.” The captain said with nothing but sincerity in his voice. “I just hope I am not too late.”

The captain pulled the trigger and the weapon claimed its first victim.

 

#

 

Yannick pushed a hand into the wall of clinging snow and felt an involuntary gasp escape his lips. He’d found it! He thought as he swiped a small clump of snow onto the ground, exposing a patch of dark grey hull beneath. He’d found it! His team were spread out already, ship schematics up on their wrist panels, all searching for a way inside the derelict vessel’s lifeless carcass.

It had been a hard walk getting here since they found the scar and there was not long now before night fell, bringing the temperature plummeting even further with it. Temperatures got so low that not even their thermal clothing could save them. They had the means to defend themselves against predators if needs be in the form of Hans and Seb, but guns were little use against hypothermia and all things being equal he’d just as sooner be tucked up inside a reinforced ship’s hull. He’d had enough of camping. He wondered how much of the power grid they would be able to get back online, he longed for a heated room and a hot drink.

Yannick had been an outdoorsman and explorer since his youth, he yearned for the freedom and serenity of the outdoors and felt at his most comfortable in the middle of nowhere.

There was no habitat or environment on the supercontinent that he could not survive in, but survival is not always enough. Eventually you really started to miss comfort.

A shout way over to his left brought him out of his daydreaming and he turned to walk in that direction. As he did he noted that there was no sign of the ship’s high V-shaped wing, along with its two massive engines.

When Yannick thought back to the frozen junkyard of twisted metal, smashed machinery and pulverised technology they had just navigated their way through to get to the wrecked ship it was hardly a shock that all that appeared to remain now was its hull.

The vessel – or the Omega as it was named – was a transport ship, top of the range even now with an in-built faster than light drive.

Her hull was roughly rectangular in shape (particularly now that its wings had been smashed into rubble) but with subtle curves rather than harsh angular lines. Her bow was shaped like an upside down snow plough, designed so that if she ever had to ditch she would carve through anything in her path and hopefully preserve her cargo. To her rear there were a series of squared engine nozzles designed to give her extra power when trying to clear the atmosphere.

Most of this knowledge came from the ships blueprints, as all he could see of the Omega for the time being was its newly formed skin of snow and ice.

He approached the team member who’d called out. The rest of the his men had already arrived and cleared away the snow by the time he approached, revealing a seven foot square rectangular airlock door with a frosted metal handle to one side of it. Yannick stepped to the front of the group and ushered them aside, the team obediently moving to stand flush against the hull of the ship as he reached for a heavy duty steel lever to the right of the door labelled ‘emergency release’.

Yannick pushed his body flat against the hull with his team before taking a firm hold of the ice-laden lever with his right hand and wrenching it downward with all the strength he could muster.

A series of dull cracks followed as small explosive charges blew the bolts holding the door in place to pieces, then a final bone shuddering boom rang out as secondary shaped charges blew the heavy airlock clear of the ship’s hull.

Yannick shook his head to try and clear the ringing sound from his ears but as he couldn’t really tell what was ringing and what was just the howling of the arctic wind he gave up, instead opting to distract himself with looking inside his new found camp.

The smoking entryway led into a large airlock room with a second, equally as strong-looking reinforced doorway. This one had no emergency release mechanism space side, mostly to stop intruders getting into the ship, but Yannick had anticipated this.

He climbed into the room closely followed by the rest of his team. Once inside he removed his hood and thermal wrap from around his face. It was still bitterly cold but there was little of the blizzard making it into the small room and the lack of wind chill made the cold on his face bearable.

It had also cut the background noise in half.

Yannick took a few deep breaths, savouring the cool, crisp air.

“Well done, we found it boys and girls. Now we can start working.” He said to the other members of his team who were busily peeling layers of fabric from around their heads and extremities.

“Elise, get up front and start looking at this airlock. I want in – Hans help out Elise and do precisely everything she says, just because no one has told us if there are any fail-safes in place it definitely doesn’t mean there aren’t any. Karl, you get some lights going, and give everyone a check over if you can do so without interfering with their work.” He said, somewhat shocked to hear just how discordant his own voice had become.

A collection of nods and mumbled yeses came back in reply.

Yannick was a team leader of a civilian-based seeker team. While he knew discipline was important, he couldn’t care less about how people responded to him so long as they got on with their work. He judged by actions, not words – just as his father had always taught him. As he watched his team go about their duties, he went over to watch Elise. She was already running a scanner around the edges of the door in a zigzag pattern. She didn’t look up as he approached.

“What ya need, Boss?” she asked, she hadn’t turned around to face him but he knew by the honey in her voice that she was smiling.

“A hot bath, soft bed and a stiff drink, but a way into the ship would do for now.” He replied, watching the indicator lights on the scanner. Elise and the doorway she was working on were suddenly lit up with a bright light as Karl powered up one of the high powered spot lights, designed mostly to let the native predators know you were there and definitely not to be trifled with, but at a push they were also useful for interior lighting.

“Well it might take a while. The power grid is down, though that was to be expected. What wasn’t expected was that you want to go inside. Weren’t our orders to find it, report it and camp outside of it until someone comes to pick us up – and presumably the cargo we’ve been traipsing around this frozen wasteland to find?”

“Yes, they are, but this is an emergency access hatch and this is an emergency.”

Elise turned around for the first time, her bright blue eyes shone in the light, so much that Yannick barely noticed that her blonde hair hadn’t been cleaned in weeks.

Apart from the hair, however it was barely noticeable that she had been away from civilisation for well over a fortnight. Her soft features were still so perfect that she could be on her way to a Council ball with little more than a quick shower without looking out of place – her full lips had even managed to avoid being scorched by the bitter cold. Yannick suspected that the only explanation was that she was an android – it would explain the peerless intelligence and aptitude with electronics and engineering as well. It would also make her warmth and cheerfulness inexplicable.

“What’s the emergency? Something you’re not telling us Boss?” She asked, her face now twisted into a frown of confusion.

“The emergency is that I don’t want to sleep in the damn snow again – but I’ll think of something more interesting for the cavalry when they arrive. Can you get the door open?” He replied.

A look of relief swept across her features. “Yeah, of course I can, the codes are several years old, I’ll have to cut into the wall and plug in a power cell from one of our lights to power the door though.” She said as she turned back to scanning.

“Just get it done.”

As he turned to leave her to her work Hans was arriving at Elise’s side with a ration block and a large rectangular black case that he recognised as a power source for one of their large high powered lights – they nodded to each other as they passed.

Yannick approached the corner of the room to the right of the blown airlock that they had entered through. Another member of his team sat there with his face half covered by messy ear length hair that despite his reasonable age of thirty three was mostly grey.

Karl Jerno was Yannick’s party medic, and the team’s only family man, having two children and a loving wife back at the Citadel. He was knelt down as the team leader approached him, fiddling with the second spotlight which vaguely resembled an oversized, composite, legless black scorpion. Except this monster’s tail fitted snugly into the back of its onyx carapace when it wasn’t in use.

When it was lifted into position a large lamp could be seen on the end of the tail and the void in the body inside which it had once rested became the receptacle for the power cell.  Judging by his grunts and murmured curses, this particular one was not working. As Yannick drew closer Karl appeared to give up, brought his legs out from beneath him and sat there in annoyance staring at the machine.

“Problems, Karl?” Yannick chuckled as he reached him. As he spoke, the team medic launched a spiteful kick at the power cell that lay in the unit. A subtle clunk echoed around the hollow chamber as the contacts made a connection, and the powerful light blinked into life, right into Karl’s face.

“You know these lights are so damn powerful that when you’re close enough to the bulb it’s actually warm?” He moved his hands in front of the beam and rubbed them together.

“I’m aware old friend, but I try not to tell people or they’d run the battery down in a couple of days for the sake of a little comfort.” Yannick said with a chuckle. “Speaking of which, I think Elise is okay with one light for now, kill that one for the moment and save the power, I might set it up tomorrow outside as a beacon for the other two.” He added as he looked out of the entryway into the blizzard.

“Having second thoughts about the radio party?” Karl asked, seeing the look of concern painted on his leader’s face. “We have to get word out, and those two are probably already inside the cave system working their way to the top, with no wind or snow, and not being right next to a bloody great opening into the maw of a blizzard either. I’m pretty damn jealous, to be quite honest.” He added reaching down and flicking off the light. Yannick was sure he saw his friend’s body slump a little as the warming sensation on his face died off and allowed the bitter cold to begin gnawing at it again.

“A little,” he replied “but they are both good at what they do, and they know what is expected of them. I wish I could have waited but if we’d have all come right here it would have taken days, even weeks to get the message out. The Citadel would not like the idea that we had been here that long without them knowing.”

Karl nodded, “I’m also pretty sure they wouldn’t like us breaking in, so why are we doing that?” He looked up at Yannick through his dirty grey hair. “We’ve done dozens of hikes for the Council Yannick, so why wait until now to start prodding at the beast?”

Yannick looked towards the inner airlock and saw that Elise had started cutting into the wall next to the door in order to gain access to its electronics. Hans was standing beside her, with the large power cell wrapped in one gorilla-sized hand. Happy that no one else was listening in, he turned back to his old friend.

“Aren’t you curious, Karl? What have the other searches been for? Wild goose chases? Looking for rebel outposts or surveying for minerals? The first time in over ten years we’ve had an interesting job and it’s to find this – the Omega herself.” He leant over and placed a gloved hand on a bulkhead. “If you believe the stories, the rebels sacrificed a key mole to bring her down. He was never seen again.”

“She was brought down by a computer error, a prototype that was never tested fully… “ Karl began to reply before being cut off mid-sentence.

“Open your eyes, old friend. This ship is state of the art, even now and she’s already years old – yet they still haven’t replaced her. Why is that? And what was she carrying that’s so damned important that it takes a prototype to carry it? And she has FTL capabilities! Where was she going? The Council knows there’s no other inhabitable planet around here to do anything with.” He stopped talking and moved closer to the medic. “And what about the rumours at the bars? People go missing from the streets weekly, and the foundries produce ever more complex machinery and arms that no engineers can identify – which is also shipped into orbit to form “planetary defences” against an enemy that isn’t there?”

Karl shifted uneasily in his chair, he was a family man by nature and didn’t tend to let the rest of the world bother him too much. He just worked with Yannick, went home and paid the bills – so in reality most of his cash went full circle back to the Council for amenities but he wasn’t overly bothered as out of the deal he got two amazing children and a doting wife, as far as Karl Jerno was concerned, that was a pretty sweet deal. Yannick loved him for his honesty and integrity but hated him for his willingness to bury his head in the sand for a comfortable life and he felt it necessary to shake up his world view every so often.

“Listen, Jerno” He continued, emphasising the use of his last name to add a sense of formality. “If they ask, we just entered for warmth, I’ll tell them Hans fell into a water pocket out on the plains and needed heating up – it’s on my head. I just have to know.”

Karl nodded silently, which made Yannick suddenly feel a little guilty, he could tell his oldest compatriot of the wilds was not happy with this situation. Upon reflection he couldn’t help thinking it would have been a good idea to leave him behind for this trip – but as always, the money was needed and if truth be told Karl was needed by Yannick, it made him feel safer having him around. Sort of like a good luck charm.

“I don’t know why you’re worrying” Yannick said, “It’s not as if even our little Elise will ever get the ship operational enough to get this damn door open.”

He’d barely finished the sentence when the lighting inside the airlock flickered into life, and a gloomy, dirty glow was cast about the grey interior. A second later there was a series of small clunks followed by a whirring sound as the interior airlock opened like a portal to the heavens – the inside of the ship beyond the inner airlock appeared to be fully powered up, the bright light stung Yannick’s eyes like the sun after a night of particularly heavy drinking.

“Elise…” Yannick started.

“Don’t look at me, Boss!” She shrieked, holding her hands up in innocence. “I just patched the power cell into the door! I did nothing to the ship at large… unless I’m better than I even knew – in which case I want a raise.” She said, finishing with one of her trademark smiles.

Hans didn’t waste time, he shoved the beaming girl to one side and had his mag pistol drawn, pointing into the light. “Don’t see anything moving, chief.” He said his voice devoid of emotion.

“Not unless you’re planning to shoot at ghosts, meathead” Elise said, shoulder barging the massive soldier with all her weight though he did not seem to notice. “If you think back to the briefing, she had standard 3 months rations for all personnel on board. Anyone who survived the crash is long dead now, and she only had a skeleton crew anyway, the ship was flown by navicomp.”

The enormous man grunted and put his sidearm into a holster attached to the upper left of his ox-sized chest, “So what now?” he demanded, turning to look at the team leader.

Yannick stared into the light spewing from the freshly opened airlock. That wasn’t supposed to happen. She’d been lying like a lifeless, frozen corpse here for years now, her systems should be dead. The power cell for the spotlight was powerful – but nowhere near what this beast needed to operate. He suddenly realised he’d been asked a question.

“Well, we go inside.” He replied.

 

#

 

Seb sat on the cold rock and looked back towards the entrance of the cavern, he couldn’t believe he’d agreed to come on another one of these damn trips. At least it was working for the Council though and not some peasant looking for a runaway child. He looked across at his teammate, scrawny little thing that he was.

Sometimes Seb detested the kinds of people he was forced to work with. He was a trained soldier, he should be raiding rebel hideouts or kicking in the doors of people that harbour them – not sat here, with him.

Even that pathetic little pistol on his hip was a joke, how did he expect to take down a wraithcat with such a small calibre bullet and crappy penetration? If you shot it in the skull with that it would just make it angrier. He sighed.

Wraithcats were the premier predators of the plains, they were large predatory animals that were feline in appearance and represented the pinnacle of evolution on the planet, barring humans. They varied in size, ranging from eight feet in length from head to tail to some reported to grow up to eighteen feet if genetics and resources were on their side. Their prey varied just as much as their size, eating the moose, white hare, rodents and helk that wandered the frozen wastes to the north or sometimes venturing further south to the boreal forests to prey on deer, though this brought them into competition with the black wolf packs and ursine tyrants that called the woodlands home.

The wraithcat’s fur was a mixture of white and light grey which when blown in the wind shimmered almost identically to the snow in the howling blizzards. They were very hard to spot and with large paws seemingly designed for running across deep snow and ice they were impossible to outrun on their home turf. They had lightening reflexes, razor like claws and large, yellowed teeth not to mention the kind of strength you would expect to find on a pneumatic ram – which is why when a survival expert says the only way to survive an encounter with one is to shoot first and ask questions later, you do not argue. You’ll need to reload quickly however as Wraithcats mate for life at a very young age and as a result they always but always travel and hunt in pairs. It is believed that should you kill one and escape its life partner by some twist of fate then the remaining animal would spend the rest of its days trying to track you down and take its bloody revenge.

“Wils, you ready to move?” he sneered, not bothering to try and hide his distaste.

The other man was huddled away to Seb’s right hand side, a chemical fire stick scorching the floor in front of him. He looked back and nodded.

“Good” Seb said, getting back to his feet in one movement, his pack still strapped to his back.

Wils took a little longer, he struggled to his feet and stood there for a few seconds gently swaying as he tried to find his centre. Seb found it hysterical that this man was allowed to leave the city limits he was so weak. He overbalanced as he tried to lift his rucksack and had to quickly put it down again before he face planted into the hard rock floor. Seb walked over to him and lifted his rucksack with one arm.

“Need a hand?” He asked, a predatory grin plastered across his face.

“Thanks.” Wils replied, sliding his arms into the straps of the rucksack. He winced as they bit into his increasingly tender shoulders.

“Don’t see why this team needs someone of your… stature.” Seb said, as he let go of the bag. Wils let out a stifled yelp but managed to stop himself from tumbling backwards. He turned to face the giant.

“Mostly because those big arms and thick skull wouldn’t know what to do with an advanced communications array if it came with holographic instructions,” the smaller man growled through his grinding teeth. The adrenaline had hit as the straps dug into his flesh overriding the common sense of not insulting a man a foot taller and several feet wider than himself. “Can we move? This is mostly uphill and I’d like to get this over with.”

Seb laughed boisterously. “Of course, Boss, after you!” he said stepping to one side and motioning into the dark cave. He ignored the jibe, he wasn’t about to knock a man out when they were on a job, that could come later.

“After you, please. You’re the heavily armed one. I doubt I have the strength to fend anything off, a particularly vicious uneven surface will probably floor me.” Wils said, indicating the heavy mag accelerated shotgun strapped horizontally to the soldier’s rucksack.

“Look at that! So I am. Stay close, if a pair of wraithcats walks into us I may need to throw you at them as a diversion.” He replied, pulling the gun free and holding it across his chest. He reached up and switched on a pair of torches attached to each side of his head with an elasticated strap, and then flicked one on that was attached to the barrel of his shotgun.

Wils sighed and hit a few buttons on his wrist panel and a hitherto unnoticeable light beam emanated from its front edge.

After about fifteen minutes of walking through the pitch darkness Wils and Seb seemed to be satisfied that they weren’t walking into a lair of wraithcats, the pair started some strained conversations to keep the fear of the dripping walls and eerie echoes from getting to them.

“Well” said Wils “we know why I’m here, Seb, so why is an elite soldier such as you slumming it with a search team? Surely you’d be best off in a unit somewhere tearing off some poor rebel’s arms?”

Seb grunted. “My old man, he’s a general. Insisted that I joined the army – then once I do he freaks out at the thought I might be hurt or killed and made damn sure that no unit in the army will have me on active duty.”

“How did he manage that?”

“My dad? He told them not to. That tends to work for him with most things.” Seb said, pointing his shotgun into an alcove as he passed it. “People he can’t scare he befriends, sooner or later everyone belongs to General Mead.”

Behind him Wils let out a snigger. “I thought I had problems” he added.

“It’s okay, I can find other ways to entertain myself. That’s why I just want to get this over with and get paid.” They came to a fork in the cave system, Seb looked briefly at his own wrist panel and started following the path right after spending a few seconds shining his gun light down the left tunnel to make sure nothing sinister was lurking there waiting to follow them up the opposite path.

Wils looked down at his wrist panel to try and discern their location – the device could be tuned in to a large number of technologies, at the moment both his and Seb’s were using a sonic echo device stowed in Wils’ bag to map the cave network they were navigating. A detailed map was displayed on the panel’s reasonably sized screen. It would be easy to get lost in these caves and spend your last days crawling on your knees around the maze of identical looking grey stone tunnels, but using the mapping system they should be able to reach the high ground within thirty minutes from their current location. Seb heard him punching at the buttons.

“So, how do you entertain yourself while you aren’t walking through dank tunnels with weaklings?” The communication engineer asked.

Seb stopped and turned around. “That depends – what do you consider to be a good time? Do you have any love for rebels?”

Wils shook his head frantically.

Seb grunted and carried on walking. “I guess there’s no one else here, and no one would believe you if you said anything.” Or I’ll just kill you if you don’t like it, he added inside his own mind.

Seb smiled to himself, remembering the last time he’d partook in his hobby.

“You know the Tower?”

“Of course I do, it’s a little hard to miss.”

“Well they got a prison there, on the lower levels.”

“They do? Who for?”

“Isn’t that obvious? Rebels of course – or those that mix with them.”

“And you go there?” asked Wils.

“Yeah, it’s not so bad from the right side of the bars,” Seb replied, smiling to himself. “Depending who you go to see of course.”

Wils said nothing. Seb let out another raucous laugh that lightened into a wicked chuckle. He’s so weak, so pathetic and frail. He can’t even stomach the idea of those worthless fucks getting their comeuppance, he thought to himself.

“You see, I know a lot of the guards up that way. If I choose the right night, the right guards will be there and with a little coin I can see anyone” Seb let the words sink in. “Alone.”

A weak voice came from behind him. “You mean you…”

“Yes, I go to see prisoners and physically instruct them on why they shouldn’t oppose the Tower.”

“But they are helpless.” There was a little more venom in the voice now, Seb laughed again.

“That’s what being with the rebels will get you, helplessness.” He flashed his gun light down another side tunnel. “Besides, it’s good for building my stamina and working on fighting techniques. If you are going  to be a soldier you better know how to fight! You seem to have recovered anyway, not feeling the fatigue so much?”

“Not so much, no. I’ve been hiking since I was a child.”

“Not so helpless then?” Seb laughed to himself again. He heard a clicking noise behind him.

“You’d be surprised just how not so helpless we really are.”

There was a dull thud and Seb felt a terrible pain shear through his chest from the back, he dropped to his knees – the gun he was holding clattered away from him. He brought a hand up to his chest and felt warm dampness, as he pulled it away and moved it into the beam of his head lamps he saw it was crimson with blood.

“You shot me.” He managed to say as he collapsed onto the floor before rolling onto his back to face his attacker.

“Very observant for a soldier, well done,” hissed the engineer as Seb looked up into the barrel of a gun. “I was never tired, or in pain or cold. I just needed you to be in front of me.” Wils aimed the gun at his stomach and pulled the trigger a second time. Seb cried out in pain that turned into a garbled cough as blood began to drip from his mouth. He raised a hand toward the deceitful engineer.

“Wait.”

“No. I have a job to do. I was going to kill you when we were closer but you tipped my hand. I wish I had longer to see how many bullets I could put into you before you died for what you’ve done at that prison. As it is I’ll have to make do with these.” He lowered his aim a second time and fired three shots into the fallen soldier’s legs.

“You know, I think I see it now. I think I can see why you enjoyed inflicting pain on those people. It really is quite fun, isn’t it.” A sixth shot left the barrel of the gun and destroyed the hand that was still raised towards the gunman. Wils took a few steps closer. “Sadly, I don’t have time to stick around. You’re lucky.” He reached down and picked up Seb’s fallen shotgun.

“Now this is quite a gun. Mag accelerated right? Magnetic coils that help the shots accelerate down the barrel? Gives better range and destructive power,” he thumbed a switch on the side of the receiver and the weapon began to emit a faint hum.

He pointed the shotgun at Seb’s throat, Seb looked as though he was about to speak.

“Sorry no time,” said the rebel, with a cold malice in his voice.

Wils squeezed the trigger and the gun discharged – a strange noise that incorporated a loud bang and a whine that brought untold devastation to the man’s body. His neck and most of his lower jaw was blown clean away, leaving a bleeding wet hole at the top of his muscular torso. Wils smiled for the first time in days, shouldered the shotgun and looked at his wrist panel again.

“Now to just get the message out to the right people,” He said to himself, and set off into the cave. “Not far now.”